On Feb 24, 2011, at 8:37 PM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote: > On 02/24/2011 05:43 PM, Ross Walker wrote: >> On Feb 24, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org >> <mailto:johnny at centos.org>> wrote: >> >>> I am not saying this to be a smart a$$ or be negative ... just saying >>> that other enterprise distributions exist that provide long term >>> stability without backports ... Unbuntu LTS is a free example. They >>> also provide integration of all their system libraries and audit their >>> software for security compliance. >> >> I think the primary driving factor for Redhat to employ the backport >> method is to maintain a stable ABI across a release, and the primary >> reason for that is for third party application support. >> >> Redhat wants to provide a platform for which commercial vendors can >> develop their wares such that they can say it supports RHEL 5 or 6 and >> it will actually run on said platform without loss of functionality or >> stability. >> >> I doubt the same can be said about Ubuntu LTS or even SLES where a >> change in a library can result in either the third party application not >> working or working with limited functionality. > > That is absolutely true and I agree with you 100% ... I like the > constant ABI across the release and the backport model, otherwise I > would be building "something else". > > But I also know that there are people who think backporting is the "Devil". > > I was only trying to provide sane advise for those people ... I think it > is much safer (and more stable) to use unbuntu than to try and build > your own latest bind and your own latest ssh and your own latest apache > and your own latest php and "other stuff" and then bolt that into CentOS. > > If you start breaking the constant ABI and introducing lots of new > shared libs, etc, then you are totally negating the only 2 things (ABI > and stability) that makes CentOS an enterprise OS. You are even likely > better off using Fedora than trying to replace massive parts of CentOS > with newer stuff. > > Now ... I have done some custom things myself (like roll in Samba 3.4.x > for Windows 7 PDC support into c4 and c5 and CentOS 5 LDAP in CentOS 4 > so I could add new C5 machines as Domain controllers in new offices with > some older C4 machines as domain controllers in the old offices without > having to replace the older OSes). > > So, with limited changes, it is possible. I was pretty sure you understood, it was more for the audience. Also to add, there is nothing wrong with adding custom builds of software, just make sure it goes in '/usr/local' for 'make install' builds and their updated libraries if they need updated libraries. If one is doing custom RPM builds it is still better to locate in '/usr/local' if possible, otherwise make damn sure it doesn't conflict with the base CentOS RPMs or one may find his/her self in dependency hell. -Ross